


The World Turned Upside Down

by Gracierocket



Category: Monstrous Regiment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27746308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gracierocket/pseuds/Gracierocket
Summary: The truce was established fifteen years ago, and Borogravia has changed almost beyond recognition since then. Now, for the first time, an Ankh Morpork journalist has been invited in for an extended interview with the famous Captain Polly Perks. Sometimes, change is a trickle of water down a mountainside. Sometimes, it's an avalanche.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 68
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The World Turned Upside Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hazel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazel/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, hazel! Hope you like it!

Captain Polly Perks, Senior Administrator and Leader of the Committee for Outreach for the Borogravian National Military Government, took in the room around her, trying to see it with an outside eye. The problem, she thought, as she scrutinised the paperwork still visible on the desk, was in trying to work out how to counter unfavourable preconceptions without knowing exactly what those preconceptions were. Oh, she’d done her homework of course – read every article the woman had written in the last few years – and discovered a Serious Journalist with a decently disguised love of sensation. She’d originally described Borogravia using words like “plucky”, but these days tended to refer to it as “veiled” or “mysterious”. Polly thought that was unfair. After all, it wasn’t like they’d built a big curtain around the whole country. People came and went all the time. They’d just turned down any big, official diplomatic visits.

She shifted some paperwork a fraction, obscuring a name and date, and revealing the distinctive crest that proclaimed the elegant, utilitarian desk as Borogravian made. Then she looked around the room. She kept it plain, but pleasant. The desk was off to one side, leaving a large space in the middle covered with a patterned rug in muted colours – a gift from Shufty almost a decade ago – in which plans could be laid out, and Maledicta could pace, and younger soldiers could stare at Paul’s birds on the walls while they worked up the courage to say what was on their minds.

Polly sat down. She’d have been feeling a lot better about all this if she’d managed to get an account of her guest from someone who actually knew her personally. Still, she considered, if all went according to plan, she’d never a problem like this again. She reached across to a brass speaking tube, flipped a lever and spoke into it. “All right, Jane. You can send her in now.”

The woman from the Ankh Morpork Times strode into the room and stretched out her hand with a practiced smile.

“Sacharissa Cripslock. Thank you so much for agreeing to see me.”

“My pleasure”, said Polly, and gestured to a seat. As she lowered herself back into her own chair, she noticed the other woman’s stiffness. Corsets, of course. They had never been popular in Borogravia at any time – back breaking labour does not lend itself to a compressed ribcage – but now they were virtually unheard of outside of the country’s burgeoning theatre scene, and that consisted exclusively of public school boys declaiming extracts from Ephebian playwrights.

Jane gave a discreet knock, and entered carrying a tray of tea and biscuits, which she set on the desk between them before departing.

“Well,” said Polly, “Do I start, or do you?”

“I’ll start, shall I?” said Miss Cripslock, giving that bright little smile again. “Well, I suppose the most pressing question our readers will be asking is ‘why now?’ You must be aware that newspapers around the Disc have been making requests for interviews for years without success. To be quite honest, it’s become a matter of form to send out the request at all.”

“A matter of form?” said Polly.

“Oh, you know, the requests you make largely to remind the other person you still exist, when you don’t have any real hope of getting what you ask for. ‘Will the Patrician of Ankh Morpork consent to an interview about his day to day habits for our Lifestyle section?’ ‘Will the Guild of Assassins allow us to publish their full list of persons on whom they are not accepting contracts?’ ‘Will the administration of Borogravia consent to an interview of any kind, on any terms?’ And suddenly, we get not just a yes, but a yes from Polly Perks herself. So, why now?”

Polly considered the question. “You know the sort of state we were in by the time that Truce was signed,” she said finally. “You must do. It was your newspaper told everyone about it.”

Miss Cripslock inclined her head.

“Then you’ll know it was all… Well, it was all a bit desperate. The only reason the entire population wasn’t cut in half that first winter was because Ankh Morpork bailed us out. I hope you’ll pass on my thanks to your readers, by the way.”

Miss Cripslock inclined her head, smiling slightly.

“We survived. And then Prince Heinrich of Slovenia tried to start the whole thing up again the moment the last frost thawed.”

“This is Prince Heinrich whom you personally kicked in the… Well...”

“In the place where I thought it would hurt most, yes.” Polly waved the question away. “The thing about Slovenia, is that they’ve always quite enjoyed things being the way they’ve always been. They’ve got their monarchy, they’ve got money, they’ve got a well supplied army. That sort of starting point doesn’t encourage you to think, much. For us it was different. We knew we couldn’t win a war, but we also knew that Slovenia was the only country on the Disc that wanted us to fight one. That sort of big picture thinking was new to us, but it was absolutely unheard of to them.”

“So you… what? Asked Ankh Morpork to intervene?”

“That was our last resort, yes. But actually we didn’t need to. We went to the Prince, and we threatened him with it. Told him Ankh Morpork and Klatch and all those other far off places wouldn’t be buying their wooden clogs for a long time if they didn’t put a stop to what they were up to.”

“And that worked? After decades of war?”

Oh, half a century, at least. Since the Dark Empire fell. And no, it didn’t work, not on its own. Prince Heinrich is a man who… I’m sorry, I don’t know the Morporkian word for it but here, we’d say he ‘thinks with his socks’.”

Miss Cripslock stifled a smile. Polly’s face was an effortless deadpan. Then she caught the other woman’s eye and winked. Miss Cripslock laughed. Polly continued.

“Best way to beat people like that is to make it possible for them to say they beat you, while also making sure they know they can’t. That threat, that let him know he wouldn’t beat us. But we also gave up all the contested territory between our two countries.”

Miss Cripslock stared. “All of it?”

“That’s right,” said Polly, and realised she was beginning to enjoy herself. She hadn’t told this story in well over a decade, and Miss Cripslock was a professionally good audience.

“But… the border between your two countries was contested for...”

“A very long time, yes. So it felt like a big victory to the Prince, and he could go home and tell all of his subjects and-”

“Wave his socks around?” suggested Miss Cripslock.

Polly grinned. “Do you know why that border was so contested?”

“Because the border was a river, and it moved several miles every summer,” said Miss Cripslock smartly.

“Yes. And the thing about several miles of land that may or may not get completely flooded every year, is that it’s not actually very useful. You can’t build on it. You can’t even really farm on it unless you want the last three months of each year’s crop rotation to be spent fishing. The only reason to hold onto that land was pride. And we decided a few square miles of flood plain wasn’t much to be proud of. Luckily for us, Prince Heinrich thought differently.”

“And of course,” said Miss Cripslock, “It makes you look like the bigger person in the eyes of the world, and Prince Heinrich look like a heel if he ever tries it again.”

Polly brought out her best neutral, political smile for that one.

“All right,” said Miss Cripslock, “So you’d sorted out your border, managed to make future conflict very unlikely, and ensured you weren’t going to actually starve. What then?”

“Well,” said Polly. She stopped. “What you’ve got to understand is that we had nothing. Really, almost nothing at all. We didn’t have a single person under the age of 60 with any actual expertise in farming, or anything else that wasn’t directly related to warfare, come to that. And anyone who was any good was out of practice because they never had the resources to keep their arm in. Those of them that had managed to keep at least one arm, anyway. Our God was dead, and we’d all spent years trying to make a coherent culture out of a set of random commandments. People had started praying to the head of state, for goodness’ sake. The only thing we were any good was was war, and we weren’t particularly good at that. And as for starving, that second winter was almost as dangerous as the first. We had a name, we knew who we were, but we were starting to realise that we didn’t know what that meant. And there were plenty of times during the second winter, and the third come to that, when I thought we might all starve to death before we had chance to find out.”

“But you didn’t starve.”

“No, we didn’t. We called in the army.”

Miss Cripslock shifted in her seat.

“No, not like that,” Polly continued, taking in her expression. “It was the only functioning institution we had, and it had almost all the able bodies. So we put them to farming. Any area of land that already had a competent farmer in place was given soldiers to farm it. And for all those areas where there was no-one left to run it, we put out the call. By the end of the first spring there wasn’t a patch of arable land that wasn’t being run by a competent farmer and worked by soldiers. And each farmer was tasked with training up at least three people to replace them.”

“That sounds like an administrative-”

“Challenge? Well, yes, but I’ve always had a way with people, and-”

“I’m sorry, do you mean it was you, personally, who administrated this?”

“Well, not on my own, no.”

***

It had been Maledicta who first pointed out the problem to Polly. They were walking back from a meeting in which they had managed to persuade most of the senior administration that it had been their idea to melt down most of its weaponry and re-purpose it as farming equipment.

“Polly,” said Maledicta, “Do you know how old I am?”

Polly looked at her friend. Like her, Maledicta had made a few subtle customisations to her uniform. She’d removed as many of the frillier bits as she’d thought she could get away with, and had on a pair of trousers under her official skirt, which had mysteriously become a couple of feet shorter and consequently much less in the way. Her brand new Lieutenant’s badge gleamed on her chest.

“No,” said Polly. “A few years older than me, I suppose. About 25?”

“I’ll be 61 next month.”

“Oh. OK...”

“It’s different for vampires, of course. We don’t age much, generally speaking.”

“Right. Um, why are you telling me this?”

“Because I think we have a problem.”

“Not the coffee? Because I put it right at the top of the essential imports list, and-”

“No, it’s not the coffee. It’s Borogravia. We’re about to forget everything we ever knew.”

Polly stopped and looked at her. “What do you mean?” she said.

“I mean I’m pretty sure everyone who still remembers how to do anything except run a war is older than me. And they don’t have the life expectancy.”

Polly looked out across the newly reclaimed farmland surrounding the Keep, and took this in. On the other side of the field, a group of soldiers were inexpertly attempting to plough a furrow. Even Polly could see it was too shallow. “Damn,” she said softly.

So they sent out messengers. Every village, every farm, was required to report any real expertise they had. Farming, weaving, spinning, blacksmithing, animal husbandry, building. Maledicta was right. Any trade not in direct use by the army was about to die of old age.

They ate together that night. Late, as usual. Exhausted, as usual. Polly stared blearily at the list in front of her. “We’re still short of anyone we can send to Splot,” she said at last.

“No surprises there,” said Maledicta, with a spirited attempt at her usual light tones. “You’d have to wade through several feet of muck to even find the soil.”

Polly laughed. “You do realise muck and soil are the same thing?”

Maledicta waved this aside. “Details, details. I’m a lieutenant now. Big picture thinking, right?” She moved around to Polly’s side of the table, refilled her glass and twitched the paper out of her hand. “Hmmm,” she said. “What about Olga Segundi?”

Polly shook her head. “She’s working the mountain province.”

“Yes, but her deputy’s William Legging, isn’t it? Bright young man. Do him good to have a little responsibility.”

Polly nodded, and Maledicta made the adjustment then put the paper away. They ate in silence for a few moments, then-

“Polly.”

Maledicta was looking straight at her.

“Hmm?”

“I wanted to say… I’m sorry. About the promotion.”

Polly looked back to her food. Morporkian cabbage again. “You’ve got nothing to apologise for. You deserved it. And you’ll make an excellent officer.” Her words came out stiffly, which made her feel a little ashamed.

“It should have been you,” Maledicta persevered.

“No,” said Polly. “It should have been one of us. You’re as good as me, and you’re more… officer shaped.”

“You mean I sound like a Rupert.”

Polly smiled slightly. “In the nicest possible way,” she said.

“That shouldn’t matter,” said Maledicta, in a tone that would, in anyone else, have been described as mulish.

Polly was silent for a moment. There were many things she could say. That it was a galaxy sized step for the army to have promoted a private soldier who was openly female onto the officer track at all. That it was always going to be too much to expect that they might promote out of their class, as well as out of their gender. That if you want to rise to the top, and you aren’t exactly like all the other people who are already up there, the best thing you can do is make sure there’s no more than one significant difference between you and them. One, they can overlook. This is the Century of the Anchovy, after all, even in Borogravia. But Maledicta knew all this already. So instead, Polly looked up and met her friend’s gaze.

“Mal,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’ll get there.”

***

Miss Cripslock smiled again. Polly thought that this time she detected a hint of trepidation behind her eyes.

“And am I right in thinking that quite a few of the experts you found were women?”

“Quite a few, yes,” said Polly. “Spread across all the trades.”

“And soldiers were happy to take orders from female experts? That’s very… modern.”

“Not really,” said Polly evenly. “They took orders from the person who could help them not to starve to death, and those people trained up the most likely candidates, whoever they happened to be. When you’re about to fall into a hole, you don’t tend to mind too much who’s on the other end of the hand pullling you out.”

“I understand you also have the only dedicated hospital of gynacology on the Disc.”

“Really?” For the first time, Polly was surprised. She recovered herself. “Yes, it’s run by a friend of mine. And it’s not just… er, what was the term you used? Gynacology? It’s not just that any more. When some of the other women from her clan saw what Igorina was up to, they slipped off to join her. I think it is the only hospital run mostly by Igors though. There’s about fifteen of them there now.”

“And so now, fifteen years later, multiple important roles are held by women.”

“Well, yes. About half. We were a backward country for a long time, Miss Cripslock, but we’re not stupid. We couldn’t afford to waste any knowledge, any resources. If the best man for the job was a woman, well, it was best for everyone if she got on with doing it.”

Polly paused. She wasn’t managing to convey what she meant, she knew. Wasn’t managing to convey the intense, terrifying freedom of those first few years. They’d all been hemmed in by increasingly insane Nugganatic Abominations for years, constantly in a state of mild guilt about all the ones they knew they weren’t following. And suddenly they learned, in one shining moment of clarity, that Nuggan was gone, and it was like being let out of a cave and into the bright sunlight. There was no god in Borogravia. Things might be immoral, but, definitionally, nothing could be sinful.

No-one burned their Dimmity scarves. Borogravians generally weren’t the type. But they quietly put them away, and after a few months those pieces of fabric found other household uses. Women started cutting up their long, full skirts and discovering that it was possible to turn one skirt into two pairs of trousers, with care. The excuse for this was that there was no new fabric to be got, but somehow even when cotton started to be produced again a few years later, the skirts didn’t return.

Places of worship were unobtrusively repurposed, first as temporary barracks for the soldiers and then as indoor markets, or schools, or whatever else the village needed at the time.

Polly pulled herself back to the present, and tried another tack.

“But that can’t be a big surprise to you, can it? You’re from Ankh Morpork. You’re a woman. And I met an Ankh Morpork police sergeant who was a woman, and that was years ago.

Miss Cripslock thought for a moment. “That would have been Commander Angua, I think. Head of the City Watch.”

“Well, there you are then,” said Polly.

“Well, yes, there are women with power in Ankh Morpork,” said Miss Cripslock, and for the first time, Polly saw that she seemed uncomfortable. “But not many,” she finished, lamely.

It struck Polly that Sacharissa Cripslock was embarrassed. She didn’t want Polly, of all people, thinking of her city as anything other than right at the forefront of every kind of progress. Polly decided not to push it. Her entire plan relied on Sacharissa Cripslock’s good will, and favourable write-up in that newspaper of hers.

“Well, it worked for us,” she said, blithely. “Oh, and the other thing we did was, we rotated the working parties.”

***

That had been Sergeant Major Jackrum’s contribution. They’d been sitting by a roaring fire at the Duchess, Polly having finally prevailed on her to come and take a room for a few weeks.

She was leaning back in her chair, staring into the flames and meditatively chewing on some tobacco while Polly finished reading over the latest preliminary plans for the new working parties.

Jackrum settled herself more comfortably in her chair. “Keep ‘em moving, lad. That’s my advice.”

Polly glanced up from her work. “Who, Sarge?”

“These new digging parties of yours. It’s a good idea – assign a team to each farm under the eye of someone who knows what they’re doing, and let them learn what they can while they get the job done. But every three months or so, move ‘em on to a new patch.”

“Might be a bit tricky.”

“Tricky? Tricky? They’re soldiers, aren’t they, for all you’ve swapped their swords for sickels. They can walk if they have to.”

“OK. True. Why, though?”

“Listen lad, when you’ve travelled as much as I have in your own country, you’ll know that Borogravia in the north don’t look much like Borogravia in the south. No good training up a bunch of lads to till fields in one part of the country if they can’t jump ship in a pinch and help with the harvest somewhere else. That’s my first reason. My second is that when all those old bodies retire, you want the best you can get taking their places. That means the fastest minds in Borogravia, not just the fastest in one particular platoon.

And I got a third reason too. Because if you don’t it’s only a matter of time before some jumped up little corporal or ambitious lieutenant looks around his little domain and thinks, ‘I could be king here’. You’re changing the way the whole country works, Perks, the way it thinks. If the workers keep moving, they’ll make sure everyone’s keeping up with the changes. You’ll have one nation to work with, rather than dozens of little kingdoms.”

Polly was about to reply when little Jack came in, on his feet but still holding onto the wall as he went. Jackrum’s face broke into a broad grin and her hand went straight to her pocket.

“Well now,” she said. “What have we got here for a good boy?”

She pulled out a small packet of dried apple – a luxury at that time – and pulled the child onto her knee.

Polly turned in her chair to see Shufty framed in the doorway. She was smiling, her arms covered in flour up to the elbow, and her second pregnancy just beginning to show. On her finger was a gold wedding ring, still shiny and new.

Jackrum looked up and noticed the newcomer. “Ah,” she said, “Shufty, lad. I’ve got something for you, and all.”

Jackrum, one hand supporting the boy’s back with surprising gentleness, reached into her pack and pulled out a paper bag which she handed over.

Shufty opened it and peered inside. Then she beamed.

“Glace cherries! Sarge! How did you…?”

“Old Jackrum always knows how to make a quartermaster happy. And a thing or two about the black market and all. Sorry I missed your wedding, by the way. I had family business of my own to attend to.”

At that moment, a loud bird cry was heard from just outside the door. It sounded like “Kak kak kak”. Jackrum jumped to her feet, but the boy on her lap just laughed as he slid off, then got down and crawled to the door as fast as his little knees could carry him, all the while repeating the same “kak kak kak” they’d just heard.

And then Paul was there. He walked in with a beam for each of them, scooped up the boy and walked across the room to give his wife a kiss.

***

“You know, you haven’t actually answered my question,” said Miss Cripslock.

Polly pulled herself back to the present. Old Jackrum had been dead five years by now. She’d had a grand old retirement, a constant stream of old comrades popping into the pub she ran, rarely seen without at least one of her grandchildren trotting along proudly behind her. The funeral had been the biggest Polly had ever known. They’d had to hold it on the common because even the new grain silo hadn’t been big enough.

“Sorry,” said Polly. What question was that?”

“Why now?” said Miss Cripslock. “Why are you suddenly granting an interview now?”

“Oh, I’d have thought that was obvious,” Polly replied. “Because we want something.”

“And what is it you want from Ankh Morpork?”

“Well, everything, really.”

“Everything?”

“You see, it’s like this. For the last three years, Borogravia has produced a surplus of all our major farmed produce. We’ve put by enough to last us through a failure of an entire harvest, and I’m told that the likelihood of a whole harvest failing at once isn’t something a sane person devotes much time to worrying about in any case.”

“You want to trade,” said Miss Cripslock.

“Actually, first of all, we want to give. Ankh Morpork saw us through that first winter and we took it as a loan. We want to start by paying back what we owe. You’re a rich city, but there are poor people everywhere. Maybe this winter the ones in Ankh Morpork will eat a bit better.”

Miss Cripslock was scribbling again. Polly glanced across and noticed the other woman was using a form of shorthand, though a rather more laborious form than the one General Blouse had designed for their use during a quiet week a few years ago.

“And after you’ve given the poor of Ankk Morpork this wonderful Hogswatch present? What then?”

“Well, then we’d like to see what else we might be able to do for each other. There are a few things we’re good at, though I say it myself. I thought this might interest you, for example.”

Polly reached into her desk and pulled out a document folder. She handed it over.

Miss Cripslock opened it. Polly saw her eyes glaze slightly at the sea of figures in front of her.

“It’s yield improvements,” she explained. “It’s a summary of yields for the different provinces from the year of the Truce up to now.”

“It looks like you’re telling me that your current yield is 400% what it was originally,” said Miss Cripslock.

Polly cursed inwardly and reminded herself that just because a person could write, didn’t mean they couldn’t also read numbers.

“That’s right,” she said.

“That seems… I don’t know a lot about farming, but that seems unlikely.”

“Yes. But it’s true. Some of it’s just down to how terrible the first year was, some of it’s just what you get if you treat the land right and grow the right crops in the right places. But a lot of it’s down to this.”

Polly leaned across the table and pointed at a particular column, seven years in, where the figures suddenly jumped.

“What happened?” said Miss Cripslock.

“Fertiliser,” said Polly.

Miss Cripslock’s eyebrows raised.

Polly continued. “We think, Miss Cripslock. We didn’t used to think about anything, much, but now we think about everything. Everyone knows you get better yield if you rotate your crops every year. But a couple of Igors working the land near one of the dwarf mines noticed that the few acres nearest the mine entrance always had a much more impressive yield than the rest of their area. And they started wondering why. It turns out there are big pockets of gas in those mines. They’re no use to the dwarfs because it’s air you can’t breathe, but for some reason the plants love it. And those two Igors, they worked out a way to bottle it. 40% yield increase practically over night. And the lucky thing for us is that although we’ve got more of this gas than we know what to do with, it’s apparently pretty rare everywhere else.”

Miss Cripslock leaned forward in her chair slightly. “You’ve got something to sell,” she said.

“That’s right,” said Polly. “Well, two things. We’ve got the fertiliser itself, and we’ve got more food than we know what to do with. But we’ve got something else, too.”

Miss Cripslock knew a feed line when it was hovering in the air in front of her. “What’s that?” she said.

“Time off,” replied Polly. “We’ve all had our working day cut in half. Or, well, down to about 60% if we let anyone under the age of sixteen off most of their duties.”

“I see,” said Miss Cripslock. “And what do you plan to do with your newfound recreational time?”

“Well,” said Polly, “First of all, we’ll diversify. Up to now, practically everyone who can hold a scythe has spent most of the year doing just that. Most of our clothes are made by everyone else. My sister in law made that rug, for example, while she was pregnant with her fourth baby. If you want horseshoes, or furniture, or a new set of curtains, you’ve got a long wait ahead of you. So that’s step one. Build up the other trades a bit.”

Miss Cripslock looked positively delighted. “And then?” she asked, her pen poised. Sensation, thought Polly. Bold schemes, ambition, daring. That’s what they like. And that’s what we’ve got.

“Well,” said Polly. “Then, we’re hoping you’ll move here.”

The smile stayed on Miss Cripslock’s face as she scribbled.

“Not just Ankh Morpork citizens, of course. Al Khali, Sto Lat, Genua, even Hunghung if they want to make the trip. We need education. We want to invite people to come here and teach us what they know. We did our best, but a lot of skills got lost. And a lot of other skills we never really had. We can manage to teach our children their letters and numbers but after that we’re in trouble. That hasn’t been a problem up to now because anyone over about 12 would have to be out in the fields anyway. But now we’d like to start giving people a few more options. Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Journalism, History, Architecture, even Magic. Do you know there’s not a single living Borogravian witch or wizard? Nugganatic Law saw to that a long time ago. And we need books. Lots of them. Lots of copies. Every town ought to have its own library, and every city ought to have a bigger one.”

“You want… you want teachers to move here?”

“Teachers, scholars, people with expertise. We think it’s not a bad prospect. Land’s cheap, there’s not a single house that doesn’t have its own garden. People who came here to teach would be respected. They’d be in on the plans from the ground up. They can choose the colour of the brickwork, if they like. And we can cook. The quality of our food is… Anyway, we thought… well, we thought some people might like the idea.”

Polly trailed off. She looked out of the window and felt the now-familiar sensation burn within her. Pride. Outside, beautiful, well maintained fields could be seen in all directions. Golden corn, green barley, white potato flowers, red tomatoes. Around the base of her own building, roses bloomed. The land had been used for herbs until last year, but now she felt she could permit herself the indulgence. The buildings she could see were well maintained. Mostly new, and simply built, but not one didn’t boast a few careful touches that proclaimed in a universal language that someone cared about this place. And people were happy. Oh, they were still people. They quibbled, and had petty arguments and longstanding feuds. But they were never hopeless any more. Never hungry, never cold. Jackrum had once told Polly that an army marches on its stomach. Well, Polly reflected, so does a nation.

“Am I right,” said Miss Cripslock, her pen hovering above the sea of lines, “in understanding that Borogravia is still a military dictatorship?”

Not the socks, thought Polly. Don’t let the socks do the talking. She took a deep breath, as subtly as she could.

“That’s correct,” she said, with a tolerable impression of calmness. “What kind of dictatorship does Ankh Morpork have?”

“An unelected oligarchy,” said Miss Cripslock brightly, and Polly felt her bristles settle a little. “But surely, for all your undoubtedly wonderful accomplishments, the people of Borogravia are not free.”

“They’re free of starvation,” said Polly coolly. “They’re free of cold. If a young woman finds she’s going to be a mother, she’ll have a little house found for her and furnished by her neighbours before she’s too far along to move into it.”

Polly waited until Miss Cripslock had finished writing, and then relented.

“I know it’s not ideal,” she said. Up to now, it’s been necessary. The only choices to be made were choices of necessity. There weren’t any political ideas to decide about. That’s changing now. But if people are going to start getting a choice, they ought to get educated first. You can’t have people making decisions on what we ought to do next if they don’t know the first thing about it. Everyone ought to have a right to their say, but no-one’s got the right to be stupid. So we’ll have the schools, and the teachers if any want to come. And then when people know enough to tell a good idea from a bad one, they can decide for themselves what they want.”

“And will you stand for political office yourself, when that happy day comes?”

“Me?” Polly was horrified. “Not a chance. No, I’m one of nature’s Sergeants. Let the people, or the Ruperts, or whoever decide what to do. I’ll get it done. And I’ll get it done so nobody goes hungry and nobody gets cold in the process.”

“But you’re not a sergeant,” said Miss Cripslock. “You’re a Captain. And I understand you’re about to be promoted to Major.”

Polly smiled. “‘Sergeant’,” she said, “Is a state of mind.”

**Author's Note:**

> Argh, I could have kept writing this forever! What is Maledicta up to these days? What does Borogravia's emerging cultural scene look like? But I thought I ought to spend at least some time doing my actual job so I had to stop somewhere.
> 
> I had great fun writing this. I actually couldn't access your Yuletide Letter (just the short prompt) until I'd finished the first draft so it was a bit of a relief when I read it and found out you'd been thinking along similar lines! I hope you enjoyed it.


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